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The Duncan Street Miracle Garden was founded in 1988 by community member, Mr. Lewis Sharpe. The Pharoah’s Club started it off with a small plot of land behind their building on N. Collington street, but in the past 30 years, the garden has grown from one plot of green to almost the entire 2100 block of North Avenue in Baltimore’s Broadway East neighborhood. Among the thickly planted lots, you can find almost every kind of fruit or vegetable a gardener can grow in this climate. Mr. Sharpe calls it “God’s little acre.”

NDC’s Executive Director, Jennifer Goold, met Mr. Sharpe in the fall of 2016 while doing field work for the East North Avenue LINCS plan. Once it became clear he had an ambitious plan for the garden to bring in more community members, NDC partnered with him to fold Duncan Street Miracle Garden into our Place Matters initiative, which works to increase the capacity, resources, and power of people oranzing around a place.

We are continuing our partnership with Duncan Street Miracle Garden this spring, and are grateful to all the volunteers who have helped with clean up, weeding, and prepping the dirt for planting. During the spring and summer, the block-size garden becomes a haven of colorful flowers and fresh vegetables for the neighborhood, but there’s still plenty to do to get the space ready! On a weekly basis, you can find Mr. Sharpe and volunteers coordinated through The 6th Branch, installing wooden edging, trimming trees, clearing debris, planning out a new fence, and coordinating a new shed and picnic tables. We are in the process of gating the alleys to make the area safer for neighbors walking or biking through the space. Last spring, the muralist, GAIA, painted a large portrait of Mr. Sharpe on a building facing North Ave. Mr. Sharpe aims to continue adding public art to the garden, creating an outdoor gallery of Black history as a backdrop to this East Baltimore oasis. The ultimate vision will look more like a neighborhood-enclosed park with an overflowing garden, activity areas for families, and open green space to host community events.

Along with this vision, we are excited to announce an event in early summer, the “Day of Play”, which will serve to bring more youth involvement to the Duncan Street Miracle Garden. Recently, we helped secure a BMORE Beautiful Mobilization grant to install a new wooden fence, and collaboratively plan this event. You can look forward to a celebration with music, hamburgers on the grill, live mural painting in the alley, play-oriented workshops, and a chance to welcome kids, parents, grandparents, caregivers and neighbors into the garden to make it a truly multi-generational community space.

Hear more about the Duncan Street Miracle Garden from the founder, Mr. Lewis Sharpe:

As told to NDC’s Americorps VISTA, Maura Dwyer:

“The Pharaoh’s association started the garden in 1988 on a small plot of land behind their building on N. Collington St. I came in and asked them about getting a lot. They asked me how much I know about gardening, and I said plenty! I wish I could show everyone this garden like it was back when we started- brand new wood chips, gravel all laid out, brand new green border walls going down the lot, and flowers going all the way down both sides, it was the most beautiful thing, and I just can’t believe it’s been 30-some years, but we gotta put it back again.

This spring, I am lookin’ forward to all kinds of fruits and vegetables, cabbage, collard greens, mustard greens, tomatoes, string beans, and I may try some sweet potatoes this year, and I want to get more apple trees. I have one called a fruit cocktail tree – there’s five different kind of apples on that tree, once they get ripe you can go ahead and pick it, they’re all different colors.

I’m also really looking forward to getting my fence put up, all the way from one building to the other. Right where they just tore down those buildings, I want to put a pavilion there. I’d like to put a round one in that space, put some picnic tables there, with a round roof, with benches and tables underneath.

What I really want is to get some animals-not no dummies, no statues- live animals- small ones. I want some animals that will stay in the garden, like a little farm on one of these lots. The kids would love to get on a pony and ride it around. I want ducks, goats, and chickens too. That’s the vision.

When we started the garden in 1988, it improved the whole block. It would be better for neighborhood kids to have somewhere where they can play that’s safe, where no one is running in the street, and they feel protected. It’s all about the kids to me because I think they need somewhere to go these days. Really I want people from Broadway East to have somewhere to go and relax, I would like them to feel welcomed. I am growing food for the people.”

“God gave me a vision. I could have been somewhere, making money to put in my own pocket, but instead I came here to spend money on the garden that I didn’t really have; whatever I had, I split it with the garden. This was my heart’s desire: Get this place fixed up nice and beautiful. Broadway East should be beautiful- you’ll see, it’s comin, it’s comin.”

The Inner Harbor is Baltimore’s living room. It’s where we as a city gather for events, and where we welcome visitors from outside our metropolis. Located at the corner of the harbor, McKeldin Plaza is an ideal gathering place. The Brutalist fountain that once anchored this space has been removed, and temporary landscaping awaits the plaza’s revitalization as a civic space. Architects from AIA Baltimore’s Urban Design Committee (UDC) and the Neighborhood Design Center (NDC), and students from the Morgan State University School of Architecture + Planning used methodology developed by the Gehl Institute to study how the plaza is functioning as public space, and how it might be modified to be a more welcoming and inclusive place. The team also collaborated with students from the University of Maryland Landscape Architecture program who developed design concepts for this public space. These design concepts, along with the site analysis were presented at a D Center Conversation on December 5 2018, at a public forum for discussing design in Baltimore.

A healthy street tree canopy in inland communities can impact the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay.

A recent Chesapeake Bay Foundation report indicates that the Bay “became more polluted last year for the first time in a decade.” That’s despite the fact that the Chesapeake is protected by one of the most comprehensive interstate environmental plans ever: the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, signed in 2014 after more than three decades of groundwork. How do we explain this unexpected development? Because with climate change has come increased, and increasingly erratic, rainfall events. With these more infrequent, higher-volume rains, more pollution ends up getting swept from farms and city streets into rivers and streams.

So what can designers like us—and the communities we work with—do about the situation? First and foremost, we can keep that water out of our waterways until it has either been soaked up by vegetation or cleaned of its pollutants, especially excess nitrogen. That means investing in biological infrastructure like street trees, which sources like the local Baltimore Ecosystem Study and the national EPA have recommended for years. Not only do street trees slow, sink and spread storm water—and by sink, we mean that the water is allowed to percolate into the soil, rather than run over its surface—they also provide dozens of other co-benefits, like urban heat island mitigation, crime reduction, and even improved birth outcomes!

NDC’s Right Tree, Right Place program works with communities in Prince George’s County to educate them on the benefits of street trees and help grow their urban tree canopies.

These are some of the many reasons why the Neighborhood Design Center partners with Prince George’s County’s Department of Public Works & Transportation on its Right Tree, Right Place program. We reach out to potentially interested communities—prioritizing those with large numbers of hazardous trees and/or low existing urban tree canopy—and then help the county plant as many as 5,000 trees per year. We hope to thereby grow Prince George’s County’s urban tree canopy, for the benefit of all of its residents.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Right Tree, Right Place program, feel free to reach out to Yasha Magarik, RTRP Program Coordinator, at ymagarik@ndc-md.org, or 301-850-1462.

The Neighborhood Design Center’s work has always been rooted in building equity: by creating professional plans with our community partners, we work to redirect public and private resources to the neighborhoods that need them most. But, like many nonprofits, the makeup of our organization hasn’t always adequately reflected the communities that we serve.

Central to our current strategic plan is building the diversity of NDC’s staff. And we’re thrilled that our Senior Program Manager (Prince George’s County) Marita Roos was recently selected to participate in the University of Baltimore’s year-long Maryland Equity and Inclusion Leadership Program. The program, which begins this month, trains people working in public service, teaching and the private sector to advance inclusion equity and diversity in their organizations.

Over the course of the coming year, Marita will be immersed in a constructive, systemic approach to exploring, experiencing, and deepening NDC’s understanding and awareness of structural, social, and cultural inequities in our workplace and communities. In particular, the program places a focus on a deeper understanding of race and racism—what those terms mean, where they come from; how they operate for individuals, groups and for society as a whole; and why it continues today.

Work underway at German Park (L) and an early sketch from NDC’s design for a reimagined community space (R).

We were thrilled to see the construction has begun at German Park, a city-owned recreational space in Reservoir Hill for which NDC produced a conceptual design. German Park is adjacent to the successful revitalization of Reservoir Hill’s Whitelock Street core, including the Whitelock Farm and community space and expected expansion of St. Francis Neighborhood Center. A new collaboration between City agencies, nonprofits, and the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council (RHIC) is poised to make German Park a premier neighborhood asset that contributes to the vibrancy of Reservoir Hill.

NDC’s conceptual design for the new German Park.

With assistance from the Baltimore City Department of Planning’s INSPIRE program, German Park transferred ownership from Baltimore City Department of Housing to Department of Recreation and Parks, which will maintain the site. INSPIRE is funding nearly $100K in improvements designed to provide a foundation for additional investment. RHIC is working with community residents to envision these changes with NDC, and conceptual plans will be further developed by Rec and Parks for these capital improvements.

RHIC initially reached out to NDC to lead a collaborative design effort for German Park that would help make the park a destination for neighborhood youth. To support this goal, NDC hosted a “kids only” visioning session, among other engagement efforts, in 2016. The final design, selected by community members via an online survey, offered new play opportunities, open sightlines and views into the park, and an ADA accessible concrete path. The INSPIRE-funded improvements that are currently underway include strategic demolition to improve visibility, new walkways connecting park amenities, new entryways at Whitelock Street and Linden Avenue, and new murals by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and Jubilee Arts Art @ Work program.

Illegal dumping, speeding cars, overflowing dumpsters, illegal businesses, and not one place to garden pushed one Prince George’s County resident to action. For Sawa Kamara, Red Top Road was an unsightly dumping ground that made her worry for the safety of her and her child. Determined to make a change, Sawa began working with her District 2 Council Member, Deni Taveras.

Volunteers and NDC staff add more green to Sawa’s Hope Circle at this fall’s Clean Up, Green Up event.

Council Member Taveras requested services from the Neighborhood Design Center to create a master vision plan for the area. Residents were engaged at events, formal and informal meetings, and onsite conversations. The vision plan was distributed to County agencies, nonprofit partners, and property owners to unify efforts around a single vision that sought to foster neighborhood pride, provide assets for youth and their families, and beautify the area as well as increase safety, health, and wellbeing.

Multiple agency partners collaborated to tackle the structural problems on Red Top Road. The Department of the Environment hosted a cleanup. Department of Permitting, Inspection, and Enforcement focused inspectors on the area and provided technical support in designing some waste management solutions. DPW&T cleaned unsightly brush, installed continuous sidewalks, and has scheduled street light replacement. Residents also organized into the Takoma Branch Civic Association in August of 2018.

Residents were eager to address illegal dumping, an ongoing issue along Greenbriar Avenue.

One small, forgotten area that saw frequent illegal dumping was the “paper street”—a street that appears on maps but was never actually constructed—Greenbriar Avenue, owned by DPW&T. NDC, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, residents, other nonprofits and the councilmembers’ office have been working together to turn the derelict area into a parklet for play and community socializing. The first phase, implemented during the summer and fall of 2018, was large scale infrastructure: depaving, installing stormwater management, stabilizing slopes, and pouring retaining walls. It was designed as a collaboration with NDC staff members Rachel McNamara and Marita Roos, and DPW&T staff. Upon completion of phase 1, the site was renamed Sawa’s Hope Circle and an honorary street sign was installed.

NDC hosted a series of engagement events to listen to residents’ needs and ideas for an improved community space.

Residents planted 40 perennials through this year’s fall Clean Up Green Up program. Staff from the council member’s office, NDC, the Northern Gateway CDC, and NDC board members and volunteers also supported the efforts. Housing Initiative Partnership, with NDC support, has championed a grant application to install phase 2 of the parklet. While grant review goes on, NDC is working directly with the civic association to design a plan for a playable, beautiful social space for Red Top Road residents. Several other suggested projects are being taken on by local nonprofits and we expect a lot of exciting new things to be happening around Red Top Road.

How long have you been in the Baltimore/DC area? I was born and raised in Baltimore City and haven’t lived anywhere else. I live in the Lauraville community in Northeast Baltimore.

How did you get into design? I have always had a passion for art and design. I went to the Baltimore School for the Arts and studied visual arts. When I was in high school, I thought about doing architecture, but the college that I went to didn’t have a architecture major or any program related to architecture. In my freshman year at Frostburg State University, I was trying to figure out what career I wanted to do that included some aspect of design. One of required classes that I had to take in my freshman year was a geography class about the movement of people in the world and I found the class very interesting. I had a conversion with my professor after the class and he told me that I should looked into the Urban and Regional Planning major. I had looked at the required classes for the major and decided to take more planning related classes. When I went home over winter break, I did some research about planning and was fascinated by urban development and urban design. Once I graduated from Frostburg with an Urban and Regional Planning degree, I went to Morgan State University to a get masters degree in City and Regional Planning.

How did you first get involved with NDC? When I started graduate school, I was trying to find an internship that could provide me with experience in the planning field and working with the community. I found NDC while looking online and looked at a list of projects that needed volunteers, and thought that volunteering might be interesting thing to try. The first project that I volunteered for was the Highlandtown Schoolyard project and then I was asked to volunteer on the North Avenue Streetscape Plan.

What motivates you to volunteer with NDC? As a planner in Gaithersburg I do not work on many projects within the community. NDC provided me with an opportunity to work on a project with community stakeholders and taught me a different perspective in community involvement and how to interact with community members. I’ve always believed that to have a better understanding of where you are working you need to go to those communities and talk with the residents.

What do you find most rewarding about your work with NDC? I just love volunteering and working with community members. It feels good to know that I am making a difference in the community.

What is inspiring your work now? Just not knowing what’s going to happen next. I feel like there’s always new surprises when I go into work. Things pop up and you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t think about that,” or “I didn’t know that was an issue,” and it makes you think more, and that’s how you learn—especially in the planning field.

Has working with NDC changed the way you practice design? While volunteering with NDC, it made think about more about design and how people interact in public space. When I review plans at work, I make sure that site plans are in conformance with City Code and site plan requirements. NDC provided me with an opportunity to work with other architects, landscape architects, engineers and planners. This opportunity taught me how others think about space and design.

How long have you been in the Baltimore/DC area? I arrived to the DC area in 1994. I had been living in Boston, working in design practice and teaching part time until 1991, when I took a full time teaching job at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. That started as a one-year lectureship but it turned into a three-year position in the departments of Landscape Architecture and City & Regional Planning. I came here for a tenure-track position in ’94, when the University of Maryland’s Landscape Architecture program was one year old.

How did you get into design? I was always interested in art and I was encouraged at home and in school. My mother sold residential real estate to support five kids and I had always been interested in buildings of all sorts. After some trial and error in other fields, including a stint with architecture school, I received a general fine arts degree in painting and drawing. Upon graduation, I did what many art school grads do—I waited tables and tended bar. I worked as a gardener and discovered landscape architecture through my neighbor. I eventually went to the University of Virginia for the three-year MLA program. By Thanksgiving of that first year, I was a convert. I felt like this was it, I’d found my calling.

What motivates you to volunteer with NDC? I have always appreciated what the NDC does. I always liked the people who worked for NDC and I thought there might be something that I could do to give back to the community. I often participated in project reviews for our Community Design Studio, so when Jan Townshend, an alumna of our BLA program, became a project manager at the Prince George’s County NDC, I got more involved. Years later, Jan encouraged me to join the NDC Board of Directors and I jumped at the opportunity.

What do you find most rewarding about your work with NDC? I like the conversation with the community. I like the idea that I am not the expert when it comes to knowing the neighborhood and knowing the people in the neighborhood. I think it’s important for us to offer expertise but I don’t think we are the be-all and end-all. I come from a background where you’re a designer with a capital D and you solve all the problems. I think it was humbling to realize that there is a lot of information you’re missing. And the success of a park, a street, a neighborhood really depends on the community buying in to it and wanting to look after it and take care of it.

To me that conversation with the community is about the give and take—the idea that you have to stop and listen to what they are saying, and listen well enough to keep yourself from jumping to conclusions.

What is inspiring your work now? I am inspired by the people who are consistent in their efforts to improve communities. People who just keep hanging in there, you know? Volunteers, they’re not getting anything out of it except the pleasure of living in a community that is sharing the work. One of our graduates, Kevin Gaughan, who works for Campion Hruby Landscape Architects in Annapolis and lives in Baltimore, has been very much involved Baltimore through NDC. He’s a very giving person and a talented designer, just a great guy. Kevin has been inspiring to me and so have all these other people who are seeing the direction that their communities can go and the impact individuals can have.

Has working with NDC changed the way you practice design? Well, I hadn’t always been as engaged with the community in my design process. NDC brought me back to Earth. I still love doing high-end design that affords me the chance to explore new artful ideas and I have a great appreciation for that but I get much more social satisfaction when I’m working in these communities. That’s what really drives my boat—seeing things on a much larger urban scale, seeing more people learning about the value of good design. In many ways, good design is really working closely with the community members, determining how we can get the best to them, and having them realize that good design is their doing as well.

How long have you been in the Baltimore/DC area? I’ve been in the area my whole life. I grew up in Bowie, MD, and went to school at the University of Maryland, College Park.

How did you get into design? I was always interested in art as a kid. I took a career aptitude test in high school which indicated that I should be an architect. I was good at math and always enjoyed touring old buildings so I thought it would suit me.

How did you first get involved with NDC? I started volunteering with NDC about a year or two after moving to Baltimore to begin my professional career. I wanted to get more involved with community engagement and design, and be more involved in schematic design. In the field of architecture, when you’re starting out and just doing red lines for the majority of the day, volunteering is a good way to gain additional experience. By volunteering I was able to interact directly with clients, manage meetings, and develop the design at a level that was unavailable to me in the workplace early in my career. So, not only was I doing something good, giving back to the community, but I was also helping to further my professional career. I have probably worked on about 10 or 11 different projects with NDC over the years.

What motivates you to volunteer with NDC? You feel like you’re giving back to the community—really helping people out—while also using your talent for design. It’s an opportunity to have more of a managerial role, more of a hands-on role, than you often get in an office setting.

What do you find most rewarding about your work with NDC? When you have that conversation with the client and they say, “Wow, you really helped me see something that I had never thought of before.” Helping a client visualize what is in their head, but that they haven’t had the chance to really think through. Helping them grasp that dream, so to speak. A lot of the time, you don’t get that kind of experience professionally; often you hear about client wants and needs second-hand. I think hearing feedback firsthand, from the client, is invaluable to the design process.

I think we should have more of the entire design team involved with those kinds of interactions in a corporate world, too. I think it’s important that all the voices are heard, and the only way for all the voices to be heard is if you have a lot of ears listening.

What is inspiring your work now? I recently went to a great conference called Reclaiming Vacant Properties. It really brought home the struggle with vacant housing in America, particularly in the center of the country. In Baltimore, we have a lot of the same issues of vacancy. It’s important that, as designers, we try to this address in any way we can.

I have also recently been serving on the National Resiliency Education Working Group for AIA National, too. Through the group we have been developing ways we can educate architects to think about resilient design, designing to anticipate shocks and stresses like natural disasters. We’ve also discussed aspects of social resiliency, looking at how we can design ways to make our communities more inclusive, but still safe and secure.

Has working with NDC changed the way you practice design? Yes, it makes me want fight more for community input in design. I believe that you can develop a project that both satisfies community needs and project-specific goals budgets. It is important to hear what everyone has to say to establish the design and compromise where necessary to create the best solution for the project.

NDC was invited by the Town of Riverdale Park to facilitate a visioning session for an unused grassy space, popularly known as the “Field of Dreams.” Once a ballfield and play area, the park edge has been impacted by a new traffic circle and a recent mixed use development built on the nearby Whole Foods site. The town is hoping to activate the space while remaining sensitive to neighbors’ needs for a simple, quiet place.

20 community members participated in the morning activities, led by NDC’ers Rachel McNamara and Marita Roos. Nearly everyone lived within walking distance of the park. The morning’s icebreaker, “Postcards from the Future,” gave people a chance to freely dream their vision for the future park in a message to a loved one – often enhanced with a colorful and highly personal design. The rest of the morning was spend choosing from a set of images to identify the park character and a set of priorities for the landscape. Nature, trees, and pollinator plants were on virtually everyone’s list. Play spaces for children and quiet areas for adults to relax were also favorites. Importantly, many people noted that they did not want lined sports fields with active sports. Informal, beautiful and accessible space seemed to be on most people’s wish list.

During December, NDC will work on a landscape design concept incorporating the consensus from the workshop and an online survey. The concept design will be presented to Town Council in January. The town expects to implement the plan in phases over the next 3-10 years, depending on cost.

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